- Consumers will be paid for supplying the grid with power.
The City of Cape Town has announced plans to commence paying consumers who feed electricity back into the grid. The initiative is aimed at freeing residents from Eskom’s rolling blackouts.
Formerly, compensation had been restricted to credit on municipal accounts, but now the City will start paying cash once a customer’s municipal account has been cleared.
This initiative will initially be aimed at commercial and industrial (C&I) customers, as these customers tend to have more surface area available for installing solar power panels. However, the policy will be expanded to all electricity-generating customers over time, even residents with small-scale rooftop solar PV installations.
Small-scale electricity generation (SSEG) is an underutilised source of energy that can quickly be brought online to help ease the electricity crisis. This starkly contrasts with National Government’s over-regulated process through which commercial Independent Power Producers (IPPs) are registered and approved before being allowed to produce and deliver power to the grid.